


Where There's Smoke, There's Fire

by on_my_toes



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: College AU, Modern AU, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-05-15 21:18:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5800486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/on_my_toes/pseuds/on_my_toes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course a fire would break out in Rey's apartment building the night of her biochem final — and of course she would end up running out into the sidewalk keyless in her pajamas, right next to the most obnoxious frat party in the world. At least it can't get any more embarrassing than this ... that is, until her TA Ben Solo shows up. </p><p>One-shot, based on a Tumblr prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this prompt from an anon user: 
> 
> "modern au prompt: 3am and the fire alarm in our apartment complex just went off let me lend you my jacket while we wait on the sidewalk" 
> 
> As usual, I got a little carried away.

At 2:30am, Rey surrenders. Her eyelids are burning with exhaustion, and she is so delirious that the words in her textbook are starting to make crazy delusional shapes in her brain. If she has any prayer of passing her biochem exam in the morning, she has to … 

 

_BEEEEEEEEEEEP. BEEEEEEEEEEEEP. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP._

 

Rey’s head flies up from the textbook so fast that she rips one of the pages, now stuck to her chin by way of an unsightly line of drool. She must have fallen asleep at the desk, and now — 

 

_BEEEEEEEEEEEP. BEEEEEEEEEEEEP. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP._

 

“Oh, Christ,” she mutters, the sound of it already drowned out by the unbearable wail of the fire alarm. At least that’s what she assumes it is — the fire alarms have never gone off in her complex before. During drills, which she usually ignored, a voice would come over the speakers announcing that it was only a test — 

 

“This is not a test,” comes a booming voice. “Evacuate the building in an orderly fashion.” 

 

Rey slams her biochem textbook shut. “Perfect,” she says through her teeth. Just then the volume of the alarm raises to a level so piercing that she cannot help but clap her hands over her ears — it’s unendurable. Even if it were a drill she’d have to leave. But where the _hell_ are her keys? She can’t go without them, the door doesn’t stay open on its own and it auto locks as soon as it’s shut. She scours the apartment, kicking over all the junk that she and her roommates have left on the floor, some remnant of Thai food that Poe and Finn ordered yesterday night before _ditching_ her for Christmas break when they finished their finals. 

 

She feels an unfair twinge of annoyance at them, knowing that Poe keeps his keys by his bedside and Finn wears his in his pocket and if they were here then they’d have gotten the hell outside and away from this noise by now. 

 

After thirty seconds of the siren wailing in her ears so fiercely she thinks her head is going to explode, she decides to just go without them, and figure it out later. One of the libraries on campus will open, she’ll just wait it out there until the morning. She turns back toward her room to grab her coat and a hat and the aggressively large scarf that Finn left behind, thinking that she’ll be able to fashion it into a blanket later on, and that’s when she smells it. 

 

Smoke. 

 

She whips her head around and sees that it coming up in small wafts, escaping out of the crack at the bottom of her bedroom door. 

 

“Not today, Satan.” 

 

She bolts out of there a little senselessly, not even bothering to check if the doorknob is hot, or if there’s any danger on the outside. The hallway is mercifully clear, since anyone with common sense or ears that they want to prevent from openly bleeding has already left the building. By the time Rey barrels down the stairs and slams open the front door to the complex, the firetrucks have already arrived, whirring and whining and causing enough commotion to wake up their entire sleepy college town.

 

The instant Rey hits the street she realizes just how astronomically screwed she is. She is wearing a pair of fluffy socks, Finn’s old swim team sweatpants, and one incredibly threadbare t-shirt. She sees a frat party across the street spilling out to see what’s going on and immediately hoists her arms up over her chest, realizing that she isn’t even wearing a bra. 

 

And it’s _snowing_. 

 

“Of _course_ ,” she mutters to herself, looking up at the sky with unconcealed derision. She’s talking to herself like a crazy person, but after a week of running off nothing but coffee and library vending machine food, she’s feeling pretty freaking crazy. And she’s also feeling pretty freaking like a person who’s going to fail her biochem exam tomorrow. 

 

She hugs her arms closer to herself, but it’s like trying to start a fire with two blocks of ice. In an instant she can’t feel her nose, her ears, her fingers. She hops stupidly from foot to foot, shifting her weight around, determined not to make eye contact with anyone because she knows how utterly ridiculous she looks. 

 

Her neighbors are all out on the sidewalk and mingling with the scattered frat partiers, who are generously distributing beer from a keg on their lawn to keep people warm. In a moment of weakness, Rey considers going over there, even flat warm keg beer sounding more appealing than freezing her ass off. But of all the equations she’s had to memorize this semester, she doesn’t need any reminding that Drunk Off Beer + Biochem Final = Automatic Fail. 

 

A gust of wind picks up and she shudders violently. Who the _hell_ started that fire anyway? Some tokers celebrating the end of their finals, she bets. She is vividly imagining shoving a joint down the throat of the faceless perpetrator when suddenly she feels an arm around her shoulder. 

 

At first she is too bewildered to react, staring up into the eyes of some blond stranger. 

 

“You look cold, babe,” he says. “How about you come up to my room with a few of these beers and we help warm you up?” 

 

Rey actively tries not to gag. “No, thanks,” she says, sliding out of his grasp. 

 

But there he is again, at her side, trying to push the beer into her hands. “I’m Matt,” he says, with a smile that he must think is particularly winning. “Have I seen you around before? At the technical school?” 

 

“No.” 

 

“You look awfully familiar,” he says, sidling up closer to her. She can smell the stale beer on his breath as he tries wrapping an arm around her shoulder again. 

 

She ducks out of it, firmer this time, planting a scowl on her face. He is drunk enough that he stumbles slightly, sloshing some of the beer into the snow collecting at their feet. 

 

“Don’t touch me,” she says clearly, loudly. “I’m not interested.” 

 

“Hey,” he says, scowling right back at her. She looks beyond him, seeing if she can grab someone’s attention — anyone that could act as a reliable witness to this, so she doesn’t get suspended after she clocks this guy into next Tuesday. Already her fist is cocked at her side, numb from the cold but no less ready for it. 

 

“I’m just trying to help you out,” he says, using his arm to sandwich her shoulders into him. “You don’t have to act like such a _bitch_.” 

 

She gives herself three seconds to decide whether or not it’s worth decking him — she’s not in any real danger in front of all these people, but that doesn’t make this Matt any less of an _asshole_. And he looks drunk enough that he probably won’t remember her face well enough in the morning to implicate her. 

 

Then he jerks her to the side, trying to drag her along with him across the street. Screw it. She draws her elbow back, already ducking her head down, ready to fly her fist into his face — 

 

Only there is no face to fly into. She hears Matt yelp, and her fist sinks into nothing but air. 

 

“What the _fuck,_ man?” 

 

It takes Rey a moment to recognize him — she’s never seen the TA to her biochem class wearing anything but those rigid suits he wears to class, all calculated and tall and brooding, handing back their exams and papers with an ever-present frown. Seeing him here in a sweatpants, sneakers, and a giant coat is weird enough — seeing him looming over Matt and holding the punk ass bitch by the collar of his jacket makes it difficult not to laugh outright. 

 

“She said she’s not interested,” says Ben Solo. She has heard his habitually clipped, blunt voice plenty of times in Professor Snoke’s lectures, but never like this. Ben is not loud by any means, but there is something so ferocious in his tone that even Rey is a little taken aback by it. 

 

“Look, man,” says Matt, trying to struggle out of his grasp. 

 

Ben only tightens it, jerking him with a gesture that makes his dumb drunken eyes go wide. “Get out of here,” says Ben, “before you regret it.” 

 

Matt shakes him off, and Ben lets him go. In another instant he’s swallowed up by the gathering crowd of rubberneckers, and Rey is so stunned that she has temporarily forgotten that she is basically becoming a human ice cube. She stares up at the great enigma that is Ben Solo, the very TA who has made her life a living _hell_ for the last semester, not even sure what to say. 

 

“Are you okay, Rey?” 

 

There are 110 people in her biochem class, and he hasn’t made eye contact with her once. 

 

“Uh, yeah,” she says, feeling her cheeks flush. His gaze is intense on her. Most things about him are intense, she has noticed over the last few months. “Thanks.” 

 

He offers her the slightest of smirks. “ _He_ should be thanking me, with a right hook like yours.” 

 

She smiles back, a little wary, a little surprised. He looks at her and frowns suddenly, surveying her; she curves into herself awkwardly, suddenly self-conscious that she is braless and pajama-clad in front of the same man who has the power to pass or fail her on the one class that stands between her and getting enough credits to graduate a year early. 

 

“You’re freezing,” he says. 

 

It takes her a moment to understand what he is doing as he sheds his coat — in the next instant he is pressing it firmly on her shoulders. She swims in it, the coat still warm from his skin, smelling like laundry detergent and some not entirely unpleasant musk. 

 

She is so thrown off by the gesture that she ends up stammering up at him. “I—I couldn’t. Thank you. I mean, this is so nice of you, but really, I’m fine — ”

 

She tries to take off the coat, but he plants two hands on her shoulders and says, “Truly, I insist.” 

 

His dark eyes are so solemn on hers that her protests quiet in her throat. “Thank you,” she bleats. He takes his hands off of her shoulders, clearing his throat, but then the reassuring pressure of his touch lingers. 

 

They stand in silence for a few minutes. She is reluctant to leave his side, still trying to devise some way to get his coat back to him — if she could get one of those blankets the firefighters are distributing down the street, maybe, or sneak into the lobby of one of the dorms on campus while some drunk freshman stumbled in with a key — 

 

“You live in this building?” 

 

“Me?” she asks, blinking up at him. Jesus, he’s tall. She never noticed that in class, but then again, in class the primary thing she noticed about him was that he had an infuriating way of circling even the most infinitesimal mistakes with angry, bright red ink. “Um. Yeah, with my roommates. You — you live here too?” 

 

He nods. His eyes are on her again. She swallows hard. 

 

“I’ve never seen you,” she says, because she can’t think of anything else to say. 

 

He shrugs. “I don’t go out much.” 

 

She snorts a little. “Yeah, me neither.” 

 

Right about then they see a plume of fire burst from one of the windows on the fourth floor — not the apartment that neighbors Rey, but one pretty damn close to it. Everyone on the street starts to gasp, and someone whistles lowly. People are whipping out their phones and filming it. Rey and Ben stand in silence for a few moments, and then, so delirious from lack of sleep that she can’t help herself, she mutters a candid “ _Shit_.” 

 

“I doubt we’ll be let back into the building tonight,” says Ben in agreement. 

 

“My books,” Rey laments. 

 

He cocks an eyebrow at her. There is something unmistakably playful in the expression, and she feels her heart do this strange and slightly unwelcome flop at the sight of it. 

 

“Don’t tell me you’re still studying for tomorrow’s test,” he says. 

 

“Fine,” she says wryly. “I won’t tell you.” 

 

They fall back into silence for a beat, and then he says, “Knowing you, you'll be fine.” 

 

It takes a second to sink in, and then she laughs outright. “You gave me a C plus last week,” she reminds him. 

 

“Yes,” he says, looking up at the building, deliberately not making eye contact with her. “But between you and me, there is a possibility that I have been planning to grade you all on a curve. And there is a possibility that you are at the top of it.” 

 

She can’t help the grin that splits her face, her chapped lips burning in the cold. “A possibility, huh?” 

 

He looks down at her, seeming a bit disarmed by her smile. She has pushed him too far. She is about to take a step back and shut the hell up before she digs herself a bigger hole, but just then he smiles back at her, the sight of it so unexpected that he seems like an entirely different person. Handsome, even. 

 

_Great, Rey_ , she thinks to herself. _You’re so drunk off lack of sleep that you have the hots for the asshole TA._

 

Another firetruck whirs past. 

 

“We’re never getting back in, are we?” she says, the exhaustion creeping into her voice. 

 

“Listen,” he says. “My parents have a house a few miles from here. They’re on vacation. There’s plenty of room.” 

 

“Oh,” she says. “That’s, uh — that must be nice to have them so close.” Rey herself never knew her parents, bouncing in and out of the foster system before finally fragmenting a family together with Finn and Poe. It’s strange to think that this fully-grown, slightly intimidating person has parents nearby. 

 

“What I meant,” he says, his voice a little lower, a little more apprehensive, “is that if you wanted, you could come back there with me.” 

 

“ _Oh_ ,” is the only stupid word that manages to come out of her mouth. “I …” 

 

She has to say no. This is too awkward, too imposing. 

 

“I know how scary these tests can be,” he says, setting her at ease a bit by steering the conversation back to academics. “We have a guest room. It’s no trouble at all. I’ll give you a ride back to campus in the morning.” 

 

She stares up at him, and there is something in his uncertainty, in the strange shyness that seems so incongruent with the strict TA she has come to know in class, that she trusts him. Completely. 

 

“If you really don’t mind …” 

 

“Come on. My car’s parked in the satellite lot down the block.” 

 

He starts walking, and she stands there, stricken, watching as the crowd unconsciously parts to accommodate his tall, broad-shouldered frame. After a few steps he senses she is not following, and turns back. 

 

_Oh … what the hell._

 

She follows him, practically scampering to match his pace, taking two steps to his every one. She wonders how far his car is from this lot, but is suddenly too exhausted and too grateful to care. Even with the snow and the wind slapping at her cheeks, she feels an irresistible drowsiness starting to overcome her. 

 

“Are you — do you not have any _shoes_ on?” 

 

She doesn’t know what the point of the question is, when the answer is already pretty glaringly apparent. “Nope.” 

 

He shakes his head at her. “The car’s just ahead. Take those wet socks off when you get in, before you lose a toe or something.” 

 

His little car is, unsurprisingly, pristinely clean. It isn’t new by any means, but still smells the way a car does on the lot at the dealership, all fresh and pine-y and well-vacuumed. She feels bad for tracking in all the snow with her soaked, freezing socks, but he doesn’t mention it, carefully watching to make sure she sheds them and that she has buckled her seatbelt before he pulls out of the lot. 

 

The next thing she knows the world is jostling, and she is peeling her eyes open. 

 

“Hey.” Ben’s voice is soft and careful, close to her ear. His hand is on her shoulder. “We’re here.” 

 

She flushes, stunned with herself for falling asleep so easily — in a practical stranger’s car, no less, and when he was doing her a massive favor that deserved more attention that conking out in his passenger seat. Still bleary, she sees that he has opened the car door for her, and is waiting with an expression of both patience and slight concern. 

 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to — ”

 

“No, no,” he says at once, offering her his hand. “Don’t apologize. You looked — I mean, I know you’re tired.” 

 

She manages a wry smile. Ordinarily she would feel uneasy taking a man’s hand so formally like this, but it feels natural to take his. He eases her out of the car, remembering to grab her socks, and then walks her up the brick stairs to a lovely, quaint little home that she remembers passing on some of her long distance training runs during the cross country season. She had always envied it for its simplicity, for the little flower pots in the window ledges, for the sweet little porch swing on the front deck. It looked like a place where people were happy. It looked like a home. 

 

He unlocks the door and lets her inside, and now he is the one who looks self-conscious as she stands in the foyer, still wearing his jacket. 

 

“Here,” he says, taking it off of her. “I’ll, uh — I’ll grab some dry clothes for you. Hold on.” 

 

She stands in the foyer, watching his retreating back and feeling like an intruder as he disappears down the hall. She shivers, clutching her arms to herself as she takes in her surroundings. She sees shoes lined up by the door, sees family pictures — sees Ben as a baby, as a kindergartener, as a college graduate at this very university. A familiar ache rises up in her as she turns, taking it all in — the way the home is so lived in, so worn, so well-loved. 

 

“Sorry, these are the only clean things I could find.” 

 

She swipes at her eyes, turning to face him with a strange and misplaced guilt. He is holding a pair of sweatpants and a shirt with the Biology department’s logo on it, both of them massively large. They clearly belong to him, and the idea of it makes her chest a little warm. 

 

“That’s — thank you, that’s perfect.” 

 

He is staring at her again, in that careful way of his. She resists the urge to wipe her face a second time. For a moment she is terrified that he is going to say something, but instead he holds out his hand and offers the clothes to her. She takes them gratefully, muttering a thank you, and he points her down to the guest bedroom down the hall. 

 

She is swimming in his clothes, but they are so soft, so comfortable, that she doesn’t even notice. She sinks down into the bed and looks around the room. It is probably the nicest place she has ever slept — between her dingy string of foster homes, the archaic dorms, and the cheap mattress she bought in her current apartment out of the display room of a mattress warehouse, she cannot remember ever feeling so at ease. 

 

There’s a knock on the door. 

 

“Come in.” 

 

Ben creaks the door open slightly, then stays standing in the doorway, as if he is afraid of taking up too much of her space. “I, uh — I brought a towel. In case you wanted to shower in the morning. Bathroom’s down the hall.” 

 

“Thank you,” she says, and because she hasn’t gotten a chance yet — “Seriously, thank you for this, I don’t know what I would have — ”

 

“It’s nothing, really,” he says firmly. The next words are quieter, a bit more hesitant: “I would have worried about you if you hadn’t.” 

 

Her face burns. She isn’t sure what to say to that. She has lived with Poe and Finn for almost a year, but even now it is strange to her, the idea that someone might worry on her behalf. The idea that someone cares. 

 

He starts shutting the door before she can recover. “I’ll wake you a half hour before we have to leave,” he says. “If you need anything, my room is right across from yours.” 

 

_Yours_. It’s a curious choice of words. There aren’t many things that belong to her in this world, and she knows for a fact that this isn’t one of them. Still, as she melts into the cotton sheets and the seemingly infinite pillows, her eyelids so heavy that they feel like molasses, she lets all of her usual defenses fall to the wayside. Despite everything, she feels comfortable here. Despite everything, she feels … safe. 

 

* * *

 

“ _Shit_.” 

 

The clock beside the bed blinks 11:07. She scrambles out of the bed so quickly that she trips over the legs of Ben’s sweatpants, stumbling on all fours on the carpet before gathering herself up and practically flinging herself at the door; she moves with such abandon that she feels a dizzy head rush, and by the time she bursts into the hallway, she doesn’t see Ben standing there until it’s entirely too late. 

 

She barrels into him so hard that it almost knock the wind out of her. She would have ended up with her butt on the floor, but Ben’s instincts are quicker than hers, and he reaches out and steadies her before she plummets — which unfortunately, ends with her pressed up against him so close that she nearly bangs into his chin with her forehead. 

 

“I’m sorry,” they’re both blubbering at the same time. 

 

“The test — ”

 

“— is canceled,” says Ben quickly, “because of the snow, it’s not until tomorrow.” 

 

Rey blinks up at him, the words not quite sinking in yet. After another moment it occurs to both of them that his arms are fully wrapped around her body, and they jump away from each other as if they’ve been burned. 

 

“Oh,” says Rey, still a little breathless. “I … um ….” 

 

“I’m sorry,” says Ben again, “I would have woken you up, but you seemed so tired, I just thought — it might be better to let you sleep.” 

 

The ensuing silence is so awkward that Rey is almost incapable of looking at him. She is embarrassed that she didn’t have the wherewithal to get up on her own, embarrassed that she clearly looked like a wreck the night before, embarrassed at how much of a wreck she must look now. 

 

But most of all, she is embarrassed by his tenderness. Embarrassed by the way he has inconvenienced himself for her, and gone to all this trouble, when she is not worth it by any degree. She has nothing to offer him, no way to thank him. The idea of having to face him for the makeup exam is already unbearable, let alone trying to fathom the awkwardness of this moment, standing here in _his clothes_ in _his house_ in the middle of a weekday. 

 

“I made coffee — ”

 

“I’ve got to go,” says Rey abruptly, ducking her chin down and walking past him, toward the door. The words come out in a rush. “Thank you so much for everything, I really — I don’t even know how to thank you, except thank you.” 

 

“You don’t have to thank me,” he says slowly, his bewilderment incongruous with her panic, with the way she scurries toward the door. 

 

“I do, though,” she says, her eyes stinging with her embarrassment. She wishes she had woken up in the library with an awful crick in her neck, because it somehow seems more endurable that the excruciating weirdness of this. “Um, I’ll see you in class, I guess — ?”

 

“Rey,” he says, grabbing her shoulder. 

 

She whips around to face him, still bleary from the violence of waking up, her tongue thick. “What?” 

 

“You — you don’t have any shoes.” 

 

She looks down. “Oh,” she says. “Right.” 

 

“Also, your clothes — they, um, they’re not quite out of the dryer yet, if you just want to wait a few minutes …” 

 

She thinks she might actually die right here in his hallway. He put her _clothes_ through the _wash?_ Has she ever been so pathetic or seemed so utterly useless in her entire _life?_

 

Mercifully, he seems to recover before she does. 

 

“Listen,” he says, gathering some of that sternness she is used to from his lectures. “If you want to head back, we’ll get in the car and go right now. But I’m not sure if they’ll even let you into your apartment yet, and — well, I made breakfast.” 

 

She can’t stop staring at him. He looks so at ease here, so unlike the rigid, out of place version of him that she is used to seeing in the sterile light of the lecture hall. It is like meeting a stranger. A stranger who looks after her, who cares that she’s tired, who makes her breakfast while she is conked out in his spare bed. 

 

“I’d really enjoy your company, if you want to stay,” he elaborates, misinterpreting her silence. 

 

Her throat is tight, swelling with some kind of emotion she can’t yet name.

 

“If you …” She stops herself, taking a steadying breath. “I would — I would enjoy that.” 

 

He smiles at her, that same broad and unexpected smile from last night. He jerks his head toward the kitchen, where she is already smelling something that seems suspiciously like bacon wafting. She follows him, still feeling a little bit uncertain, when he turns to her and says, “There’s only one rule.” 

 

She halts. “Yeah?” 

 

His expression is wry, his eyes bright. “No questions about the exam.” 

 

For the first time since she woke up, she feels herself relax. She returns his smirk and says, “I wouldn’t dream of it.” 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised you guys on Tumblr I would add a part two. BEHOLD.

Ben is thirty minutes outside of campus when the whiny pop song on the one radio station that works in the middle of nowhere is suddenly cut off. 

 

“This is a public service announcement,” says the broadcaster. “Hurricane Kylo has now been classified as a Category 3 storm, with winds approaching 120 miles per hour. Residents of the following areas should take immediate shelter …” 

 

Ben scowls, looking at the landscape beyond him as the car chugs along. The horizon is a crystal July blue. 

 

“Students of Ahch-To University currently on campus are advised to take shelter in the main campus library or recreational facilities.”

 

Ben’s ears perk at the sound of that. It’s not that he doesn’t believe there’s a storm approaching — it’s just that there’s really nothing else he can do but keep driving. The campus is smack dab in the middle of nowhere, so it’s not as if he can pull over anywhere aside from a half-abandoned gas station or some stranger’s house. 

 

Just as he presses the dashboard to turn the radio off, he hears his phone start to buzz in the passenger seat. His mother, no doubt. He passes a sign — twenty-five miles away from campus. How long did that radio announcer said they had? 

 

He comes to the crest of a hill a few seconds later and the question is answered for him. There is a sharp divide between the blue, blue sky and what he can only describe as a descending apocalypse. The clouds are so thick and gray in the distance that they look like something out of a campy superhero movie, just before the big bad alien comes down to decimate humanity. 

 

“Shit,” he mutters. 

 

He presses his foot harder on the gas, and realizes that the roads have almost entirely thinned out. Everybody else in their right mind has already headed home, or they weren’t so stupid to be out here in the first place. If he hadn’t been driving up from Professor Snoke’s stupid conference in the city, he might have known hell was descending on their podunk college town, too. 

 

When he’s about ten miles outside of campus, a gust of wind crops up with enough intensity to nudge his car slightly off the road. 

 

Okay. That’s it. He’s pulling over at the next possible stop. He’ll settle for some sketchy gas station, or he’ll sit in his parked car somewhere in an open area, or — 

 

“No.” 

 

The car starts sputtering. His dad’s stupid old good-for-nothing  _ clunker _ of a car starts  _ sputtering _ , and then groaning, and then … 

 

“No, no,  _ no _ ,” he mutters, slamming his foot down on the gas. 

 

It’s useless. The car crawls to a bitter stop on the side of the road and, to his horror, there is already smoke coming out of his god damn hood. He pulls his foot off the pedal and yanks on the emergency brake, turning the car off immediately. 

 

He closes his eyes for a moment and hisses an impatient breath through his teeth. He can practically hear his father now — all those times he tried to get Ben to head to the garage with him, all of his  _ you don’t even know the first thing about an engine, Ben, what would you do in an emergency, call some schmuck from Triple A?  _ And now here he is, stuck on the side of the road because he decided to study instead of getting his fingers all greased up in the belly of some dumb car. 

 

The smoke seems to go down after a few moments, so he doesn’t get out of the car immediately. He’s maybe five miles from campus now, and a good mile from the next place he could have feasibly pulled over — close, but not close enough for him to make a run for it. 

 

He sighs, and resigns himself to calling his dad. At the very least he might be able to explain how to fix whatever the hell is wrong with this thing in the next few minutes so he can get back on the road before — 

 

“ _ Really? _ ” 

 

No service. Jesus. In five seconds flat he has become the poster child for fucking with nature. He won’t survive this, but will be long outlived some five-minute PSA shown to high schoolers in driver’s ed based on his idiocy. 

 

As if to punctuate the grim thought, the wind howls with new force, whipping at his parked car without mercy. He groans and wrenches the car door open, even though he knows it’s no use. He’s not even entirely sure how to get the damn hood of the car open, let alone fix anything under it. Still, he might as well — 

 

“What the  _ hell? _ ” he mutters to himself. 

 

There is something coming up the hill. A person. A girl. On a  _ bike _ . A bike that is dangerously swaying against the onrush of the wind. Ben finds himself gaping in astonishment at the lone figure, sure he is hallucinating. 

 

“Rey?” 

 

She doesn’t hear him. Hell, he can’t hear himself. 

 

“Rey!” he yells over the wind. 

 

Her head snaps up then, her hair whipping around her face. She’s closing in on him now, her legs pumping furiously to get up the hill. He doesn’t realize that he’s waving his arms at her like a buffoon until he sees her slight grin, and immediately drops them. 

 

“Ben,” she exclaims, with a broad, ridiculous grin. “What are you doing out here?” 

 

“What are  _ you _ doing out here?” he demands, the wind threatening to blow her lean frame over like a twig. 

 

“Riding my bike,” she shouts back, as if this is the most obvious thing in the world. She hits the brakes and hops off when she gets close enough to him, and he notices that she deliberately doesn’t make eye contact, instead staring at his father’s old car. “Engine trouble?” 

 

His brain can’t seem to catch up to what is happening here. He hasn’t seen Rey in months — not since she took the final exam in Snoke’s biochem class last December. It’s been almost half a year without any trace of her, and here she is, riding through this ridiculous storm like an apparition, talking to him as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening, as if she didn’t disappear from campus last year out of thin air. 

 

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Rey, you shouldn’t be — ”

 

“Here,” she says, handing him her bike. 

 

“Uh.” 

 

Before he can get even half of his wits back, she is striding over to the front of his car, her hair lapping like a whip in the wind. In the not-so-far distance he can hear thunder growling overhead. Without any ceremony she yanks the hood of the car open, the last of the smoke immediately blown away with a gust. 

 

“When’s the last time you changed the oil in this thing?” she asks, without looking up. 

 

He shifts his weight onto his other foot. “I don’t know.” 

 

She raises an eyebrow at him. It’s the first time she has directly looked at him, and it is like staring at the sun. 

 

“It’s not my car,” he says defensively, not bothering to add the unspoken thought that passes between them:  _ You know what my car looks like _ . 

 

“Hmmmm,” she says thoughtfully, staring into the hood with the nonchalance of someone who isn’t two or three gusts of wind away from getting blown off the road. “Well, there’s not much I can do.” 

 

“Good,” he says, staring at the menacing clouds as they roll in. “It’ll take you two minutes to bike up to the next gas station. Go on,” he insists, pushing the bike back toward her. 

 

“Or maybe it’s just a leaky coolant pipe,” she says, burying her head even further into the mechanisms. 

 

“Rey,” he says, louder this time. “I appreciate it, but you’ve got to get out of here. Haven’t you been listening to the weather reports? You can’t be out here, you’ve got to go find shelter somewhere before — ”

 

“I’m not just going to leave you,” says Rey, looking affronted by his words. 

 

Ben’s jaw drops open. She says it so simply, so factually. As if she has always been here; as if she didn’t disappear last semester without a word. As if they are friends, or at the very least something more than that charged morning they spent in his parents’ house the night after the fire broke out in their apartment building. 

 

He recovers quickly. “I’ll be fine,” he says. “Really, Rey. Get going.” 

 

She ignores him. Somehow, despite all the time that has passed and the very few conversations they have had, he knew that she would. 

 

“Rey.” 

 

She levels with him then, her pale eyes bright. “Ben,” she says, every bit as deadpan. 

 

He is stricken with the sudden urge to laugh. She always has been funny. He remembers, somewhat guiltily, the way his eyes would occasionally stray in Snoke’s lectures — how he would catch her in the periphery doing an impression of the professor to her friend, or making some wry expression over a joke he wasn’t privy to. How he would hear the twinkle of her laugh echoing through the lecture hall as everyone took their seats, or watch the spring in her step when class was released at the end of a grueling two hours. How he sometimes let himself imagine following her, asking her out for coffee, getting to know her, or even … 

 

He shakes the thought away as quickly as it comes. Back then it would have been unprofessional; now, when she so clearly has wanted nothing to do with him, it is nothing short of embarrassing. 

 

He takes a breath, and finds solid ground again. “Take your bike,” he tells her calmly, or as calmly as he can trying to pitch his voice over the howl of the wind. “Please. I’ll feel better when you’re safe.” 

 

Something undefinable flickers in her eyes then, but she looks away from him abruptly. 

 

“You’re a nice guy, Ben,” she says, “but I’m not gonna — ”

 

“ _ Rey! _ ” 

 

He notices before she does, but the resulting crack is so deafening that there is no ignoring it. Her head whips toward the sound, her eyes widening like moons as she sees the tall tree leveled by the wind, starting to descend on the exact spot where she is standing. He moves faster than he ever thought he was capable of, the seconds seeming to slow to a heart-stopping, impossible crawl as he launches himself forward and wraps his arms around her small frame, shoving her to the ground. 

 

He hears the slam of the tree, the crunch of the glass on his windshield — and then, for a merciful moment, the world is still. 

 

Rey is quivering underneath him. “Are you okay?” she asks, before he has even managed to take a breath. 

 

“Yes, are you?” 

 

“Yeah,” she says, shifting a bit in his arms. Her eyes are on his then, wide and stunned but somehow unafraid. 

 

He shakes his head. “You’re bleeding,” he says, skimming his fingers to the side of her head. 

 

She winches at his touch. “It doesn’t hurt,” she insists, and then — “Jesus. You just saved my life.” 

 

He realizes that she’s basically trapped underneath him then, and scrambles to his feet just as the wind picks up again. All at once the sky is so dark that it has all but eclipsed the sun. He casts his eyes toward the horizon and it’s blacks and greys and purples as far as the eye can see. 

 

“No,” he says gruffly, “you shouldn’t have stopped in the — ”

 

He’s interrupted by another unholy gust of wind, the entire world a cacophony of leaves, twigs, and even branches all starting to whip at them. One quick glance is all it takes for him to see that the car is completely totaled, the front of it crumpled beneath the tree and the back of it littered with broken glass — even if it weren’t, he could never let her get inside of it after seeing how close they came to getting killed out in the open like this. 

 

Rey lets out a little yelp, and it takes him a second to realize that she isn’t moving of her own accord — the wind is so strong that she’s stumbling backward with it. He reaches out and grabs her hand on instinct, pulling her into his chest to anchor her. She looks up at him then, her eyes watery against the wind, and shouts something at him that he can’t hear. 

 

“What?” he shouts. 

 

She points toward the side of the road. “The ditch,” she screams back, pulling away from him, still gripping onto his hand. 

 

The walk over to the dip in the ground just beyond the highway safety rail can’t be more than a few feet, but getting to it feels like a lifetime. Just as they reach it the thunder rumbles overhead so fiercely that he can feel it shuddering in his bones, and the rain comes down in one unceremonious slap, like a wet curtain getting pulled over the entire earth. Beyond them he sees another tree crack and fall, a good quarter of a mile down the road. Rey doesn’t notice, urging him onward, her hand tightening in his against the slick of the rain. 

 

He is stunned when he loses his grip on her, as she crosses the guard rail first and slips in the mud all the way down into the ditch. 

 

“Are you — ”

 

“Come on!” she yells up at him, already scrambling to her knees and gesturing for him to follow. 

 

He tries to walk it but in the end slides down just as ungracefully as she does, landing in a heap beside her. There is the barest of respite from the wind here, but at the very least they aren’t getting cut up by random debris anymore. Rey huddles toward the ground, looking so small that if he didn’t know it was her, he’d think it was a child curled up in the muddy grass. 

 

He crouches beside her as low to the ground as he can get. Too late he realizes that her faces in inches from his. Her eyes are shut, her skin ghostly pale against the smear of blood on her forehead, but she still seems a lot more calm than he feels right now, his heart beating in too many places at once. 

 

The rain impossibly starts to beat down even harder, the roar of it unimaginable. Rey’s mouth opens wide and he realizes even though he can’t hear it that she’s laughing out loud. 

 

Well, shit. If she’s lost her mind, then so has he. 

 

Without meaning to he finds himself laughing with her, wheezing even, at the absurdity of it all. Five minutes ago he was driving down a sunny road, and now he’s huddled up in a ditch with an ex-student he had an embarrassing schoolboy crush on, hoping neither of them gets slaughtered by a god damn flying tree. 

 

“I’m a fucking curse,” Rey half-laughs, half-yells. “Every time I run into you outside of class, the world falls apart.” 

 

He nudges her with his shoulder. “Maybe I’m the curse,” he yells back. 

 

“Nah,” she says, and there is a flicker of something in her expression that stalls him for a moment, before her lips curl into another one of her usual grins. “It’s definitely me.” 

 

He is possessed by the sudden urge to push the wet hair out of her eyes. “Rey …” 

 

_ “Shit! _ ” 

 

A branch tumbles down a few inches from her head and she flinches, unintentionally pressing herself against him in an effort to avoid it. Without thinking he wraps his arms around her — he shouldn’t have any senses left to spare on being embarrassed about it, but there it is anyway, that twinge of  _ oh my god what did I just do _ as he feels the warmth of the top of her head under his chin, her torso up against his. But another beat later she reciprocates, wrapping her arms around him just as fiercely, the two of them silent and quaking and stiff in each other’s arms as the world rages on around them. 

 

Only then does the chaos seem somewhat manageable. Only then does the beat of his heart seem to find some semblance of a normal rhythm. No matter what happens in this upside down world, they’re in this together. 

 

A few minutes pass like that, and Ben almost doesn’t notice when the rain finally starts to let up a bit. The wind is still gusting around them, but not as menacingly as before. Rey lifts her head up from the flap of his jacket and casts a wary glance at the sky. 

 

“I don’t think we should move yet,” says Ben. He wishes he’d at least had the sense to listen to how long the storm was supposed to last before he shut off his radio. 

 

Rey nods in agreement. “So,” she asks, in one of the brief seconds they can actually hear each other. “Come here often?” 

 

He feels his face flushing, glad that at least the rain is mercifully hiding it. “Ha,” he deadpans. “This isn’t exactly how I imagined our first date.” 

 

Rey tenses slightly in his arms and  _ oh, shit _ . He didn’t mean to say that. The wind has knocked the sense right out of him. He spent the semester in that class barely letting himself acknowledge her as it was, and now the one time they’re alone together in  _ months _ he’s gone and opened his stupid mouth and — 

 

“So where would you have taken me?” 

 

Embarrassingly enough, he has an answer for that. He hesitates for a moment, but the mischievous gleam in her eye isn’t a mocking one. “There’s a coffee shop just outside of town,” he says sheepishly. He doesn’t tell her it’s where his parents first met, one foggy night when his father was hitchhiking and his undergraduate mother was either foolish or kindhearted enough to offer him a ride. 

 

“Hmmm,” Rey hums thoughtfully. If he isn’t mistaken, there is a slight tinge in her cheeks, too — a slight hesitance before she finally looks at him again. “Well,” she says in that blunt way of hers. “Why didn’t you ask?” 

 

Ben doesn’t mean for his answer to be so quick. “Why didn’t you come back?” 

 

Rey winces slightly, and Ben immediately regrets asking. In that moment the wind dies down just enough that there is no denying the tension between them. She pulls away, just slightly, enough that their bodies are still touching but nowhere near as intimately as before.

 

“My, uh — ” She stops herself for a moment. He isn’t used to her looking so grave, sounding so serious. “Well, she’s the closest thing to a mother I ever had, this woman … her name was Maz. And she — well, she was diagnosed with cancer over Christmas, and I … I wanted to be with her. I didn’t think it was right for her to be with people she barely knew.” 

 

This time the gesture is so thoughtless, so innate, that he doesn’t even realize he’s moved until his fingers are skimming her forehead, pushing the hair back from her face. Her eyes lock on his, wide with surprise and a kind of hunger in them — never taking her gaze off of him, she leans ever-so-slightly into his touch, like someone who is both wary of affection and longing for it all at once. 

 

“And she …” 

 

Rey’s smile is bittersweet. “She passed last week,” she says. “It was all very peaceful.” 

 

His knuckles are still grazed against her wet skin. She blinks a bit, the rain obscuring tears he knows just from looking at her must be gathering in her eyes. 

 

“I’m so sorry,” he says, too quietly to hear over the rain. 

 

She doesn’t need to hear to know what he said. “She had a good, long life,” she says, in that optimistic way of hers. “I’m just glad I got to be a part of it.” 

 

He shifts just slightly to pull her close again, and she nestles her head back into his chest. The wind has died down, and the rain has all but stopped, but neither of them moves for a long time. He feels her soft breath on his neck, the shaky rise and fall of her chest against his, and wonders about the enigma that is Rey Niima. She has always seemed so untethered, so separate from everyone else. It is the reason he was so drawn to her — he has always felt out of place himself, despite his best efforts. But now that he has some understanding of Rey’s past, however small it is, he feels some part of his heart cinching for her in some unfamiliar, powerful way. In those moments, he seems to absorb her sadness as if it is his own, and it is a burden he is more than willing to bear. 

 

They are only roused out of their thoughts when they hear the sound of tires approaching and braking on the side of the road. Rey’s head snaps up at the same time as his, and bumps him on the chin —  “Sorry,” they both exclaim at the same time, laughing self-consciously about it. Rey scrambles to her feet with ease and surprising grace and Ben follows, stunned that the sun seems to be streaming through the clouds. 

 

“Ben?” he hears someone calling — his father. He’d know that voice anywhere, but rarely has he ever heard this much panic in it. “Ben, are you — ”

 

“Dad, we’re down here,” he calls up, following Rey closely behind as she climbs her way out of the ditch. 

 

“Jesus.” His dad’s face pops into view, peering down at them and looking decidedly more haggard than Ben has ever seen him. He runs a hand through his graying hair. “You gave your mom a god damn heart — who the hell is this?” 

 

Ben opens his mouth, but she beats him to the punch. 

 

“I’m Rey,” she says, almost merrily. “And this is the second time your son has saved my ass.” 

 

“I didn’t — ”

 

“Why didn’t you answer our calls?” his father demands. “I mean, your mother was — she’s been worried sick, and I — ”

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” says Ben placatingly, suppressing a smirk. He knows his father is every bit as much as a worry wart as his mother is, even if he would never admit it. 

 

Rey clears the ditch, accepting his father’s hand as he offers it to pull her back up. 

 

“Thank god this  _ Rey _ of yours was here to keep you alive, or — ”

 

“Really, Mr. Solo, Ben was the one who — ”

 

His father cuts her off with a pointed finger. “You seem nice, kid, but don’t ever call me that again,” he tells her. 

 

She nods immediately. “Fair enough.” 

 

Ben rolls his eyes as he clambers out of the ditch, certain that there is mud caked into every crevice of his being. One look at Rey and her soaked through clothes is enough for him to see that she is no better off. 

 

“Are you two okay?” his father asks, frowning at the scrape on Rey’s head and looking Ben up and down. 

 

“Fine,” says Rey stubbornly. 

 

Ben’s eyes linger on her. “Yeah,” he echoes. 

 

His father nods gruffly, seeming to relax a bit. “You  _ pulverized _ my car,” he says. 

 

“Uh,” says Ben. 

 

But then his father does one of those things he rarely does, one of those back-clap type hugs that he saves for things like graduations or times when Ben has gotten himself into a situation that genuinely freaks him out. Ben is old enough that it has been a long time since either of those things have happened, and can’t help but feel a little stunned.

 

“Honestly, look at it,” his father continues, staring into the smashed windshield. “There’s no coming back from that.” 

 

“Yeah,” Rey deadpans. “What were you thinking, letting that tree fall there, Ben?” 

 

His father smirks appreciatively before pulling out his phone. Ben cringes, knowing he must be calling his mother to report back. As much as he loves his parents, and as inexpressibly grateful as he is that his father came out all this way to collect him, he can’t help but feel embarrassed that all of this is happening in front of Rey.

 

But when he looks over at her, there’s this wistful, almost knowing kind of smile on her face. “You’re in trouble,” she mouths at him. 

 

He grins back. Of course he is. He has been since the day she first walked into his class. 

 

* * *

 

 

Ben ends up sitting in the back with Rey, taking a look at the scrape on her forehead. Her bike is nowhere to be found, but at least she manages to find her backpack. His father grumbles for a bit about how he’ll have to go rent a tow truck to haul off the shattered car they left behind, and when Rey opens her mouth, clearly about to suggest calling someone to do just that, Ben quiets her with a quick shake of his head. 

 

“Well, I guess I owe your mom a few bucks,” his father says after a few miles. “She swore you had a secret girlfriend. Said you were getting all pine-y. I told her Solo men don’t  _ pine _ .” 

 

Ben is quite possibly paralyzed. “Dad, Rey’s my student,” he says, doing a poor job of damage control. 

 

“Was your student,” Rey adds quickly. Ben looks over at her, but she immediately tucks her chin down. 

 

“Ah,” says his father, with a knowing smirk in the rearview mirror. 

 

Rey clears her throat. “Um — could I maybe borrow your phone?” she asks. “Mine sort of … drowned.” 

 

His father tosses back the phone and Rey catches it deftly, dialing a number she must know by heart. She presses it to her ear and explains to Ben, “It’s almost a three hour bike ride from my hometown, I told the boys I’d be back by now, they’re probably — hey, Finn,” she says, looking away when he answers. Ben can practically hear the other man shouting through the line. “No, no, I’m fine — yeah, but I — no, I promise, we’re fine, we’re on our way — oh, just give the phone to Poe, will you?” She shoots Ben an exasperated expression, then says into the phone, “Love you, too.” 

 

Ben isn’t proud to admit that he knows exactly who Finn and Poe are, and that in the few occasions he saw them walking around campus in the last few months he lingered to see if Rey were nearby. 

 

“She was  _ biking _ in this?” his father mutters, as Rey attempts to calm down what sounds like an equally distraught Poe on the other line. “And your mother says I’m crazy.” 

 

Ben snorts. 

 

“Where am I taking this one?” his father asks, jerking his chin back to Rey. 

 

“The house,” says Ben. “I should really take a look at that scrape on your head …” 

 

Rey waves him off. “Finn has enough First Aid kits to last the apocalypse,” she says. “And besides, they’re all worked up now … I should really get back, if you don’t mind dropping me off.” 

 

“Are you sure you — ”

 

“What’s the address?” his father asks, mercifully cutting him off before he says something desperate. 

 

“It’s the same complex Ben lives in,” she says, earning another smirk from his father that the both of them pretend not to notice. 

 

They reach the campus area then, and see that there are fallen trees and debris everywhere — his father is dodging trash cans and recycling bins and branches in the street. The closer they get to the apartment building, the more uneasy Ben starts to feel. As terrifying as the ordeal was, there was something so intimate in it, some unknowable shared feeling that passed between them, and now … he can already feel it peeling away, as if it never happened. He can already see the sun spilling out of the clouds, people poking their heads out of their doors, the the world resuming in its ordinary way, and it’s all somehow insulting to the profundity of what just happened to them. 

 

He tries to catch Rey’s eye, but she is suddenly tense, her eyes on the road. 

 

“You okay?” he asks lowly, so his father can’t hear. 

 

She blinks over at him in surprise. “Yeah,” she says. “I just, uh … I haven’t been back since Christmas. It’s weird, is all.” 

 

His dad parks the car to let Rey out, squinting when he sees Ben open his door, too. 

 

“What am I supposed to tell your mother?” he asks. 

 

“Tell her I’m coming for dinner,” he says. 

 

“I’ll tell her you’re  _ bringing _ it, after what you did to my wheels, kid.” He sticks his head out the window, this time talking to Rey. “You can come too, if Ben hasn’t scared you off by then.” 

 

“ _ Bye _ , Dad,” says Ben over the sound of Rey cackling. 

 

And then they’re alone, standing on the curb — as alone as they were only a few minutes ago, but it’s as if an entire world has come between them. Rey shifts her weight on her feet, looking every bit as much a drowned rat as he must look himself. 

 

“So, um,” he starts. Because shit — it was one thing talking about this during a mini apocalypse, when everything was thoughtless and there were no other factors except for the two of them, right there, in the moment. But now that he’s standing here in this oppressively ordinary place, it occurs to him just how farfetched the idea is. Rey might not be  _ his _ student anymore, but she is a student. And even if that weren’t a factor — 

 

“Listen,” says Rey, with this little curve to her lip. “I’d love to go out with you, but …” 

 

He’s already nodding, already accepting it. Already standing at his kitchen counter five minutes from now and staring into the sink like the goddamn idiot he is. 

 

“... I’m afraid if we did, we’d trigger an avalanche.” 

 

She’s smiling. It’s the kind of smile that creeps on a person, that makes him smile back without realizing he’s doing it. 

 

“Or a volcanic eruption,” he agrees. 

 

Rey raises her eyebrows and grins. “Massive earthquake,” she says, with a sweep of her hand.  

 

“Tsunami,” he says, making a pfft noise like a wave. “The whole coast, gone.” 

 

She laughs out loud at that, and he chuckles. It isn’t funny, but neither of them know what else to do. After the laughter dies down she looks at her, the grin fading just slightly. 

 

“Well,” she says. “I’m willing to chance it if you are.” 

 

He has imagined some absurd version of this so many times in the last few months that even after she says it, he is afraid the universe is going to swallow it back up again. That he’ll wake up and this whole thing will have been a dream. 

 

“Yeah?” he asks. 

 

She leans just the slightest bit closer to him. “Well, we’ve made it this far, haven’t we?” 

 

He lifts his hand up to her face, skimming the edges of the scrape on her forehead. She leans just slightly into his touch, and then — she is standing on her tiptoes, her eyes sliding shut, and before he can fully fathom what is happening she is sinking into him in one gritty, waterlogged, beautiful kiss. 

 

It doesn’t last long. They’re exhausted, half-drowned, and bashful. She pulls away with a startling quickness, and he would worry if there weren’t a grin bursting on her face as she does it. 

 

“So, um,” she says, taking a few self-conscious steps backward toward the apartment building. 

 

“So,” he says, in some last ditch effort to gather some of his wits. “Meet me out here for dinner around seven?” 

 

It’s bold, and it’s soon, and he honestly half-expects her to say no. 

 

“Seven it is,” she says. She lingers for a moment more, that big, sloppy grin on her face, before turning and practically bounding into the apartment complex. He could just follow her in, he supposes, but he doesn’t. He’s still catching his breath. And if the time he’s spent with Rey so far is any indication, he doubts that he ever will. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY this time it's done for real. Thank you so much for your supportive comments and messages and lovely human selves. I love you so much that every time I've tried to be productive in my life, I've done this instead. Lolololol @ adulthood. Requests open at heyloreylo on Tumblr!

**Author's Note:**

> GUYS I am hungry for modern AU prompts like this, hit me up at heyloreylo on Tumblr :)


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